Bible lessons for persons with cognitive disabilities
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Psalms 19 part 1 "The world declares God" (© Jeff McNair)
Begin by asking people how they sat or stood or walked this past week (see Psalms 1 lesson). I told them to hold up the card with the picture at the top that best illustrated which of the three they did this past week. Great answers about how they sat, listened to Christian music, or just prayed, walked, worked hard or spoke with a friend, and stood, got baptized, invited a friend to church, etc.
Begin by telling the group that you want to tell them about the ways in which God tells us about himself. For those with greater understanding, you can say there is general revelation and special revelation. General means things which are told to everybody whether or not you go to church. Special means a special way that God tells us about himself, which is the Bible. If you were to look at the world around you, how complicated it is, how amazing it is, you might wonder to yourself, "I wonder how all this was made? It couldn't have just happened." That is the result of the general. God reveals himself through creation. Special means that in the Bible, God tells us that he actually did make the world. He also tells us that we can learn things about him by looking at the world. We can actually see God in the things around us.
Read verse 1. The things around us give glory to God. How do they say that? They say, "God made us." They say, "Isn't God wonderful for what he has done?" They say, "We didn't just happen." The things in the world declare the glory of God. This reminded me of the passage where Jesus is riding into Jerusalem when the leaders tell him to tell those who are celebrating to "Shut up." Jesus responded that if they stopped giving glory to God, the rocks would cry out. Well actually, being created objects, the rocks are always crying out, always declaring the glory of God.
Pick up a watch or a cell phone or something and hold it up. Imagine you found a watch on the ground. Would you pick it up and say, "Isn't it amazing how this watch just happened? There is nobody to do anything to make this very complicated watch. It just happened." If you were to say that, people would think you were crazy. Yet we look at people and say to ourselves "Isn't it amazing how people just happened" when we know that God made people. We can't look at a plant or an animal or a mountain or the sky and say, "It just happened." NO, the things in nature are actually telling us that they were designed by the hands of God (v 2).
I had pulled a dozen leaves off of trees we have outside at our church and passed them out to the class. I then asked them to get in groups and look at the leaves to see what they could learn just by looking at the leaves. We noted that they were different colors, that they had the same shape because they were from the same tree, that they had veins on them so they could get water and food, that some of the leaves were eaten because they were food for some other animal. I then told them how people breathe in air they need and then breathe out air they don't need. Trees and plants so the same thing. But plants use the air we breathe out that we don't need, and we use the air that the plants breathe out that they don't need. This was news to several in the class. When you think about that fact, that just gives you one example of the amazing world we live in.
Read verse 2 again. Day after day they poor forth speech and night after night they show us things to know about them. But the things in nature don't use words, they just show us.
Finally, read verse 4. "Their voice goes out to all the earth...to the ends of the world." The Bible tells us that the things that can be known about the creator are available to the whole world. Everyone has the opportunity to see the creation and realize that there is a creator. Then read Romans 1: 18-20, particular verse 20. "For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities-his eternal power and divine nature-have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse." This is a very powerful verse. On the basis of creation alone, we can be expected to realize that there is a God who is the creator. If we don't realize this or deny that God is the creator, we have no excuse. Why? Because the heavens declare the glory of God and the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
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© Jeff McNair